Voters to be enticed to the polls... with an offer of free doughnuts

Voters should be enticed into polling stations with prize draws, free gifts and stickers that say 'I've voted', the Government said yesterday.

Ministers believe they can tackle low turnouts in local elections by handing out incentives to vote that could run from a chance to win a plasma television to a free doughnut.

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said new laws to allow town halls to use voting incentives will be included in legislation to be introduced this autumn.

The gifts and prizes idea is one of a string of schemes to increase the number of people taking part in local politics, which are set out in a White Paper from Miss Blears's department.

Other plans include a pioneering offer of cash back to residents if a council fails to provide the services it promises.

That could mean a £10 rebate if dustmen fail to collect the rubbish on schedule.

Miss Blears also said local people should have the power to summon council chiefs and officials to meetings, to demand a response if a petition attracts enough signatures, and to be given more of a chance to press for the establishment of local mayors or parish and town councils.

But she is likely to face fierce opposition to another plank of the proposals, which would loosen political restrictions on councils and encourage more people to stand as councillors.

Rules which were designed to stop abuses operated by groups like the Militant Tendency in the 1980s - when one far-Left council would give well-paid jobs to the political leaders of another - will be swept aside.

In future, town halls will be able to pay high salaries to officials who are councillors elsewhere.

They will also be allowed to produce political propaganda to ' support councillors'.

And some councillors will no longer have to turn up at meetings. Instead they will be allowed to influence them at a distance by casting an electronic 'remote vote' from home.

Miss Blears said her 147-page Communities in Control paper would boost local democracy and improve turnouts, which ran at 35 per cent in this May's local elections. 'In many parts of the country, people feel they can't influence the way some issues are decided in their area,' she said.

'This needs to change. The White Paper provides real and practical ways to put communities in control, so that they have a real say, can find out first hand what is being done to improve their local services, and push any issue they think is of importance up the priority list of their local council.'

The scheme for voting incentives means those who turn up to polling stations could find that putting their paper in the ballot box would enter them for draws for prizes such as TVs, iPods and holidays.

The White Paper called for 'schemes which recognise people who have turned out on polling day, for example every voter getting an "I've Voted" sticker at the ballot box'. The plans follow recommendations made to Miss Blears by a 'councillors' commission' set up by her department last year.

The commission said voting incentives had never been tried on a large scale, but found that attempts to use them had been made in local elections in California, where free gifts for voters included doughnuts, visits to a chiropractor, and vouchers for a chicken dinner.

The Tories said the plans would open the way for corruption.

Local government spokesman Eric Pickles said: 'This is the product of a bankrupt Labour Party, wanting to stuff more cash into the pockets of Labour councillors, bribe their voters, bring back jobs for the boys and slip in back-door state funding.

'Councillors have a valued role to play in holding town halls to account. But rather than these highly-partisan measures, if the Government was genuine about local democracy, it would hand back the powers that unelected regional assemblies and Whitehall quangos have seized from local communities.'

Ideas in the White Paper were condemned by the Taxpayers' Alliance pressure group.

Its chief executive, Matthew Elliott, said: 'It is disappointing that with local government clearly in need of urgent reform, the Government seems hell bent on wasting more taxpayers' money and further undermining local democracy.

'The last thing ordinary taxpayers need is for their council tax to be spent on politicised council officers and even more party political propaganda. Local government needs cleaning up with genuine accountability and real power for taxpayers and voters, not more bias and spin.'